


If You're Still Breathing

by Qpengsin98 (Qpenguin98)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, M/M, Misunderstandings, Smoking, Trans Keith (Voltron), is shiro even in this fic, no bc hes just died, why was this written?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8854879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpengsin98
Summary: “Can I help you?”
“Is there a Keith Kogane here at the moment?”
“That’s me.”
“I’m sorry,” one of them says. Keith bites his tongue. “Takashi Shirogane is dead.”





	

Keith is making himself “breakfast,” which, at three in the afternoon, should really be considered an early dinner, when he hears the knock on his door. Pidge should be home soon, but they never knock. He caps the milk and walks over to the door to check through the peep hole. He’s greeted with the faces of two in uniform military officers. His stomach drops. He opens the door.

“Can I help you?”

“Is there a Keith Kogane here at the moment?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m sorry,” one of them says. Keith bites his tongue. “Takashi Shirogane is dead.”

They keep talking at him, explaining details, why and how and when, but he’s not listening. His fingers feel numb and he swallows a couple times.

“Mister Kogane?”

“The rest—,” he clears his throat, blinks a few times. “The rest of his group. The Holts, are they…?”

Their faces are grim. He’s immensely glad that Pidge isn’t home.

“We’re also here for Katie Holt. Is she here?”

He shakes his head once, twice, three times before he stops and takes a quick breath. “No they’re,” he winces, remembers he can’t use that with these people. “She’s not home. She won’t be for a while.” He’s lying through his teeth to get them to leave. “I can tell her.”

“It would be better if we—”

“Is it both of them?”

The first officer sighs, pinches at his nose. “Yes, both Sam and Matt Holt died in the same ambush as your brother.”

He nods, sets his own emotions aside for a second, lets numbness replace his feelings. “I’ll tell her when she gets home. It’ll be better coming from me.”

The officers concede. It’s obvious that him and Pidge are close to them, and they don’t want to disturb that.

“Do you need us to wait with you until someone can come over? We can. It’s never good to be alone at times like these.”

“No,” he says stiffly. “My… friend will be here soon. You don’t need to.”

He wants to scream at them to get out of his doorway, to leave this apartment complex and never come back, but he pushes that part of him under more of the emotional static. They didn’t kill Shiro. They’re doing their best.

“Are you certain? It’s really no problem, son.”

He can’t stop the bitter, “Don’t call me son,” that makes its way out. Neither officer seems to take offence, their faces softening into some sick understanding, and anger would have been better.

“Alright. Know that there are people here for you if you need anything. I hope you and Ms. Holt keep that in mind.”

He claps Keith on the shoulder, tips his hat back onto his head, and the two of them leave. The door closes with a dull thud.

He’s not hungry anymore.

He dumps the sad, soggy bowl of cereal in the sink, watches mushy pieces of corn flakes disintegrate into the leftover milk. He puts the milk away.

He knows that he can’t tell Pidge. They can’t know. He won’t be able to bring himself to tell them. They shouldn’t have to deal with this so young.

He shouldn’t have to deal with this.

He’s already showered today, but that doesn’t stop him from sitting under the scalding spray of water for half an hour until his back is red and has gone past stinging straight into unfeeling.

The pajama pants he pulls onto himself feel too soft for what he’s just been told. The binder pushing into his ribs feels too familiar. The shirt sits wrong, but he doesn’t bother switching it.

He allows himself one, small, not shallow cut near his wrist that he covers with a band-aid for Pidge’s sake. They know he does it, and while they’re there for him, they don’t like blood. He doesn’t like upsetting them with open new ones

The pain lets the feeling of numb wash back over all of his senses and he doesn’t have to deal with anything outside of this apartment.

Pidge greets him when he exits the bathroom in a plume of steam. “How was your day of no plans, boy-o?”

“I didn’t sleep until six and woke up at two.”

“Sounds like a great day.”

He makes a noise of assent, sits at the table, doesn’t say anything else.

“I hope you remembered it’s our turn to host pizza night.”

“Shit,” he mumbles. He’d completely forgotten about pizza night. Pidge turns to him.

“What’s with that reaction? You’re usually ultra stoked whenever Lance has a reason to come over. Even when he comes over at random times, you’re stoked. I’m actually surprised he’s not here now. What gives?”

“I think he wanted to let me sleep. He stayed up until three with me. I’m pretty sure he fell asleep mid message.”

Pidge makes a face. “Ew, that’s adorable. Well, tell him to get his and Hunk’s butt over here for some quality pizza bonding time. Also tell them to pick it up, because you look dead as fuck and I’m not going back out in that cold.”

He raises an eyebrow and sends the message, glad they’ve not caught onto what he’s upset about. Glad they haven’t asked.

“Oh, I meant to ask you something when I got home, but then you took twelve years in the shower. There were some fancy military guys walking out of the complex when I got here. Do you know what they were here for?”

He freezes, eyes locked onto the screen of his phone.

“Keith?”

“What? Oh, no, I didn’t see them. I’ve been awake for two hours and I haven’t left the apartment.”

“Hm, I wish I knew what they were here for.”

They turn back to their laptop, the tapping of their computer a comforting distraction. He finishes his message to Lance and locks his phone, slumping forward and resting his head on his arms.

“You okay? You look deader than usual.”

“’m just tired,” he mumbles into his elbow, opening his phone to see the barrage of frowny face emojis from Lance about having to pick up the pizza. He closes it again without replying, he knows they’ll do it.

“You were also in the shower way longer than usual.”

“Mm,” he halfway says. He needs to ready himself to be okay tonight, to not act worrying in front of Lance and Hunk, especially Lance. He can’t act weird around him.

“I know what’s under the band-aid, I’m not stupid.”

He gives them a thumbs up for their amazing intellect. They groan and a bunch of shuffling noises accompany them as he can only assume they get up to walk over to him. He opens one eye and his suspicions are confirmed.

“What’s up this time?”

“Like I said, I’m just tired. It’s really nothing, just one. It’s fine. How many coffees did you have today?”

They frown. “Two, but we’re not talking about that, and it’s not even close to the same thing and you know it.”

“I know,” he sighs into his arms, closing his eyes again.

“Just tell me if it gets bad again, okay? I don’t want any of us to have to deal with last time all over again.”

He nods, and hears the telltale sound of a key turning in the lock. Keith sits up in time to see Lance and Hunk, completely bundled up, carrying three boxes of pizza. No one will eat that much, but it leaves plenty for leftovers. Probably plenty more, because Keith is still feeling completely put off on eating.

He still can’t say anything.

“Ohhhhhhh, what’s going on here? Looks fun and serious, like serious fun.”

“Keith’s just scolding me on caffeine addictions while I tell him not to sleep until two in the afternoon.”

“I was wondering when you got up. A late good morning text would be nice even at two in the afternoon. Especially after I lost hours of beauty sleep messaging you.”

“You act like you didn’t sleep until noon.”

“Hunk, shhh, don’t tell the man when I slept to, that’s a secret between you and me.”

Keith smiles, gets up and takes the pizzas from Hunk. They’re warm and familiar and exactly what he wants, what he needs. He won’t eat, stomach in knots, but he’ll watch, be a part of things, until this is okay again.

A tiny part of him whispers that it won’t ever be okay again, and he tells that part of himself to wait until his friends and boyfriend aren’t around.

The night moves fast, with bad commentary on shitty horror movies that Hunk finds genuinely scary and feigned eating pizza on the couch. Lance leans on him, and Keith accepts this warmth.

He pulls himself away when Pidge is passed out and Lance and Hunk are trying to tuck them into bed.

He steps out on the balcony with the pack of cigarettes he hasn’t smoked in almost a year. The burn feels good in the back of his throat, spreads more numb over the pain that keeps trying to pop it’s ugly head up.

Arms slip around his waist and he almost jumps but doesn’t.

“You don’t smoke unless things get really bad,” Lance mumbles against his ear, concern dripping from his voice.

“It just…,” he fishes for the right words without giving away too much. “It feels better than dealing with stuff right now.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just, bad. It’s just bad.” Lance’s arms tighten around his waist and he amends himself. “Nothing like last year, I promise. I told you I’d tell you if it got like that again, and I meant it.”

Lance nods against his neck. “Tell me what’s wrong?”

He shakes his head, putting out the cigarette before dropping it over the railing. “I’ll tell you if I need to. It’s not that bad right now.”

He’s lying to himself and Lance. It’s very, incredibly bad, but he doesn’t let himself feel it.

Lance sighs against his neck and a shiver runs up his spine. “Do you mind if Hunk and I stay tonight? It’s late and I don’t want to drive back in this weather. I don’t know how you’re even out here without a coat.”

For the first time, he feels the prickle of cold against his bare skin. It’d completely gone over his head that it was actually cold, starting to snow on him in tiny snowflakes.

“Fuck, it’s snowing.”

“Did you just notice? It’s been snowing the whole time you’ve been outside.”

“Yes you and Hunk can stay.” He tries diverting the attention away from him, but to no avail.

“Keith, are you sure it’s not getting bad-bad again?”

“I’m just distracted. It’s fine.” The cold goes through him, and he clenches his teeth to keep them from chattering. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

“Don’t know where else you expect me to sleep.”

Keith turns around, meets his eyes. “Don’t tell Pidge.”

“What, that you started smoking the cancer sticks to deal with your emotions again?”

He nods, and Lance’s face softens. “I won’t, but you can’t keep it from them. They know how you get.”

“I know,” he near whispers, and the cold gets so bad that he pulls the both of them back inside. Lance tells Hunk in hushed voices that they’re staying, and he immediately drops onto the couch. Keith grabs him the extra blanket and pillow they keep for when this happens, when they stay too late to drive home, and the same is true for when they go to Hunk and Lance’s.

Keith fits himself in the bed next to Lance, pulls him close, and kisses him until he’s too dizzy to think.

“Keith,” Lance mumbles against his lips when he pulls back for air. Keith doesn’t let him finish that thought, lips back on his. He lets the feeling of Lance wash over him like a wave and ignores everything outside of the feel of his lips, the cold burn of his hand on his hip.

\---

He lasts a week without picking the knife back up. It digs into him nicely and he covers the aftermath with the hoodie Shiro left in the apartment the last time he was in town. He does his best not to get blood on it, waits the half hour for them to stop bleeding completely before slipping it over his head.

When he wears it three days in a row, only adding more red to the mix on his skin in the meantime, Pidge tries to confront him about it. He brushes them off as best he can, which means they know things are mildly bad, just not as bad as they are. He still hasn’t told them about their father and brother, and he doesn’t think he can now. They’d get mad at him for keeping it from them, but that wouldn’t be as bad as the way they’d feel. He can’t make them feel that.

Keith asks Lance to fuck him more. The intimacy feels good, the action feels bad, and the mix takes his mind away for a little bit, lets him leave himself for a while. He makes Lance think he enjoys it, doesn’t let him take the hoodie off, calls it a comfort thing.

Maybe it is, or maybe it’s just the fact that he doesn’t want Lance seeing his arms.

Maybe it’s both.

Lance frowns when he smells the smoke on him, keeps trying to skirt around the issue while getting him to talk about it, but it doesn’t work. If he talks about Shiro, he’ll talk about the Holts, and then Lance will tell Pidge or, if he doesn’t, Lance will tell Hunk, and Hunk will definitely tell Pidge, and then they’ll rightfully yell at him for not telling, because now he realizes that he should have, it would have been better, easier that day, when their friends would have surrounded them and he wouldn’t have the guilt of keeping this secret.

He sits on the cold surface of their small metal balcony and doesn’t let himself feel.

\---

Anger sits under his skin like a comfortable weight. He does his best not to lash out at his friends. It’s easier to keep it directed at himself, and, when he’s feeling particularly bad, at Shiro.

Pidge keeps trying to corner him to talk about it, and he keeps snapping at them that he’s fine, that there’s absolutely nothing wrong, and running as far from the conflict as he can. Because at some point he’s going to break and tell them everything, and he can’t. He can’t.

Keith comes home one day, exhausted, and he just wants to crawl into his bed and never get back up. He greets Pidge with a grumbled hello and a wave, and they walk right up to him and grab the keys out of his hand. He takes a second to process as they throw them into the box in their other hand and close the lid quickly.

“…What.”

“You get this box,” they shake it, and he knows there’s more than just the keys in there. “When you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

He groans and rubs his hands over his face. “Pidge, please.”

“Nope.” They sit on the couch with the box on their lap, hands over it protectively. “This has all your bad stuff in it, so if you want to do anymore of your self destructive bullshit again, tell me what’s wrong.”

“How do my keys count as bad stuff?”

“That’s just so you can’t run away from this again. No car, no apartment, no Lance’s apartment.”

He sits on the opposite end of the couch. “You realize I’m stronger than you, right? I could just take the box if I wanted to.”

“Yeah, but you won’t.”

He doesn’t say anything to that.

“Look,” Pidge says, voice softer. “I’m just trying to understand. You were doing so good, and then on pizza day of all days it all goes to shit. What happened?”

“I’m not saying.”

“Why?! Why can’t you get it through your head that you can talk to us? We’re here for specifically that reason!”

“It hurts you if I say.”

“You think I care? Just tell me!”

“Pidge,” his voice is rough and his stomach’s in knots again. He needs to do something, his resolve is breaking fast and he can’t keep this secret for much longer.

“Keith, just tell me. It’s obviously important. What’s wrong?”

It’s like glass breaking. “Shiro’s dead!”

Pidge freezes and he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“What?”

“Shiro’s dead, and so are your dad and Matt.”

He can’t look at them, just keeps shoving his palms in his eyes.

“Is… is that why those military guys were at our apartment building?”

He nods, biting his tongue to keep from saying anything more.

“Keith that- that was weeks ago. That’s… you’ve known. You’ve known and you didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell me that my family’s dead. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Pidge gets angry easy, easier when they’re upset, and they are very definitely upset.

“I wasn’t- I thought it would be better, and by the time I realized I was wrong it was too late and I—”

“What the fuck. Where the fuck do you get off not telling me that my family’s dead Keith? In what world did you think that was okay?!”

He opens his eyes, pulls his hands away. Pidge looks absolutely livid, and he can see the beginnings of tears in their eyes.

“It wasn’t okay,” he whispers. “I know it wasn’t okay. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Pidge shoves the box in his chest. “Get out.”

“Pidge—”

“Get out get out get the fuck out of this apartment!”

He stands, stumbles back. He’s never been on the receiving end of their anger before, and this is a lesser dose than he deserves. They’re openly crying now. He shouldn’t leave them alone, but he was never good at doing what he should.

“Don’t come back until you’ve stopped being a fucking asshole.”

They shove him through the doorway and slams the door behind him. He hears the lock. He should pull his keys out, unlock the door, and go back inside.

He doesn’t.

He stumbles his way down the hallway, down the stairs. Lance and Hunk should be getting out of class right now. He needs to make sure Pidge has someone.

Lance answers the phone with a perk in his voice that really shouldn’t be there after just getting out of fancy chemistry.

“N’yello my gay, what can I do for you?”

“You and Hunk just got out of chem, right?”

“Um, yes?”

“I need you to get to my apartment as fast as you possibly can, okay? Don’t ask questions. I did something really fucked and Pidge needs someone there right now. They locked me out.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Ask Pidge. Just get there, please.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he lies through his teeth.

“No you’re not. What happened?”

“Ask Pidge.” He hangs up before Lance can ask any more questions.

Keith doesn’t know where he’s going, where he can go where he can let his brain fuck him over in peace. It hits him as he slides into his car that no one will be at Hunk and Lance’s.

His phone keeps on buzzing, and he keeps right on ignoring it as he drives the short distance to their apartment complex. Everyone traded spare keys when they’d moved into their separate apartments.

He leans on the door when it thunks closed behind him. His phone has stopped buzzing and he assumes they’re with Pidge.

He expects they’ll all hate him.

Keith sinks to the floor, knocks his head back against the wood. He has absolutely no excuse for not telling them, just his own fucked up ideologies on their age and what they should know.

He hasn’t focused on this this much since the day he was told. His hands are shaking, and he makes his way to the back patio with the box. Theirs is made of wood, smaller than his. It’s mostly just a walk out door with a small little bit of room. He closes the door behind him and sits, legs sticking through the railings, dangling.

The smoke curbs his anxiety, and he loses track of the time he spends out there. It’s cold, he dimly realizes as he presses the burning out butt to his inner wrist. He can’t feel it, but the goosebumps on his skin let him know.

He presses his forehead into the wood railing in front of him, lights another one. The time all blends together into one numbed out, burnt mouth taste, save for the moments in between cigarettes, when he presses the remainders into his skin as a reminder that he’s actually alive.

Halfway through number five, when the sky’s gone completely dark, his phone buzzes once.

The text is from Lance, a small, simple, ‘where are you?’

He’s been gone long enough for his brain to answer honestly.

‘At your apartment.’

Keith sets his phone aside, doesn’t pick it back up, and easily slips back into being numb again.

The hand on his shoulder doesn’t surprise him so much as pull him out of his own headspace. He looks up to see Lance and immediately drops his gaze. He sits next to him, eyeing they pile of used up cigarettes with a look of watered down disgust.

“So…”

“Is Pidge okay?” He can’t help himself from asking.

“They’re fine. They don’t hate you, I know that’s what you think.”

“They should.”

“It was overwhelming. The fact you hid it for this long coupled with the fact that they’re actually…”

He looks at Lance, really looks at him, and his eyes lock on the bruise on his cheek. He grabs his face to look at it closer.

“What the hell?”

“Oh. Pidge though we were you and threw the remote with pinpoint accuracy at my face. It’s impressive, really.”

Keith snorts out a laugh, and then another, until he’s laughing so hard he can’t stop. Lance pulls him into a sideways hug and he hiccup-laughs into the place that’s not quite shoulder and not quite chest.

“They’re here if you want to see them.”

He stops laughing.

“They wanted to apologize, because they get why you did what you did, but they think you were kind of a douche about it.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“We know you’re fucked up over Shiro.”

He shivers. Hearing it from someone else makes it worse. Makes it real. It hasn’t been that real until today. He’s kept it in the back of his mind for weeks, doing everything he could to ignore it, numb it out, shove everything else over top of it. Now it’s staring him in the face and he can’t ignore it.

His breath stutters. He digs his fingernails into his arm, hoping the pain will pull his mind off it, but no such luck. His jaw wobbles and he clenches his teeth to get it to stop. He draws in a sharp breath, closes his eyes tightly. The sound of the sliding door jerks him upright, and Pidge sits down next to him, leaning their head on his shoulder.

“Ugh,” they say, wrinkling their nose. “You smell like cigarettes. How long have you been out here?”

“Um,” he coughs a couple times to clear the emotions from his voice. “I don’t really, uh, pretty much since you kicked me out?”

Lance tightens the arm he has around him and Pidge looks surprised. “Are you serious? That was hours ago. It’s like twelve degrees out here, do you not feel that?”

“I…” Now that he focuses, he can’t really feel his toes at all, or his fingers, or his face. What he can feel is cold, very, very cold.

“Okay,” Lance stands, pulling them both up. “Now that I know that, we are all going inside to warm up. In, get in the apartment.” He shuffles him through the doorway, onto the couch, and wraps a stray blanket around his shoulders. Pidge sits themselves directly next to him, pulls part of the blanket around themself, and goes back to leaning on him. He wraps his arms around them in an attempt to give all the comfort to them, and they do the same.

Lance has seemingly disappeared, he assumes into the kitchen where Hunk is making something warm smelling.

“I’m sorry,” Pidge says miserably.

“What?” Keith is entirely too confused.

“I shouldn’t have freaked out like I did. I know you were just trying to do the right thing, but I…”

“Pidge don’t. It was stupid and selfish. I thought I could, I don’t know. Protect you from it? Which is stupid, because you would have found out eventually. And I only made it worse for you by not saying anything. I should have told you the day they came, I should have, I- I’m so sorry.”

“You take the role of honorary big brother that Matt gave you way too seriously.” He can hear the wobble in their voice and he tightens his arms.

Keith does his best not to cry, but today, his best lasts about twelve seconds longer than Pidge’s does. Hunk and Lance sit on either side of them, bowls of some potato looking soup placed on the table in front of them for when they’re ready to eat.

“So…” Lance starts, unsure.

“Do you two want to talk about it?” Hunk supplies.

Keith is still sniffling back his tears and Pidge has given up on decency and just shoves their face into his shoulder. He shakes his head.

“No. We’ll talk later.”

Lance picks up a bowl of soup, which he hands to Keith, who immediately hands it to Pidge.

“Pidge, you’ve got to eat.”

“So do you dumbass.”

“Yeah, but- just eat the soup.”

Lance hands him another bowl, which he holds in his hands for a second, letting it warm away the last remaining feelings of cold. He takes a bite.

“Hunk this tastes really good,” he says wetly. Pidge nods in agreement, mouth full of soup.

“I just figured, something warm and homey would be good, and then Lance said you’d been outside for literal hours and I just—”

“Hunk,” Keith says, setting his free hand on his shoulder. “Thanks.”

He sends him a gentle smile, and Keith feels the smallest bit better.

Lance presses the smallest kiss to his forehead and Keith takes another bite of soup.

“Do you guys want to watch crappy B-movies until we fall asleep?”

No one opposes, and he drowns out his brain with shit movies and warm friends.

Hunk and Lance take their bowls when everyone’s done, put more blankets around the two of them.

Pidge passes out first, and he’s really not surprised. They exhausted themself with yelling and throwing and crying over a thing they should have been much angrier about. Hunk goes second. He falls asleep early, especially when bad movie about killer cars are involved.

“Hey,” Lance mumbles against his temple. Keith is barely awake at this point. “The next time you call me telling me to rush to your apartment, explain it a little better. Shit was scary.”

“Sorry,” he half whispers.

“It’s okay. Just, jeez man. Talk to us, about anything, but really, really talk to us when dead family’s involved.”

“Mmm,” he agrees, nodding off.

“Sleep well,” Lance says very quietly.

He shifts and falls into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know what this is dont ask me  
> it started off a completely different thing than it turned into this is not what i meant to write but here the fuck we go  
> fuck  
> alright  
> im tired and i dont want to ook at this anymore please just take it


End file.
